Pope Francis on Ash Wednesday: Lent is not a time for useless sermons
Feb 26,2020
Again this year, the pope celebrated Ash Wednesday on the Aventine Hill in Rome.
As per tradition, the Mass began here, in the Basilica of St. Anselm, with the penitential act. Afterward, Pope Francis walked to the Basilica of St. Sabina, nearby.
It is a short but meaningful procession, symbolizing the Lenten journey beginning on this day.
During his homily, the pope said human beings are dust, but dust infinitely valuable in the eyes of God. That, he said, is the meaning of Lent.
POPE FRANCIS
“Lent is not a time for useless sermons, but for recognizing that our lowly ashes are loved by God. It is a time of grace, a time for letting God gaze upon us with love and in this way change our lives.”
To change our lives means also to acknowledge our call to fulfill God’s dream of loving, said Pope Francis.
POPE FRANCIS
“If I live only to earn money, to have a good time, to gain a bit of prestige or a promotion in my work, I am living for dust. If I am unhappy with life because I think I do not get enough respect or receive what I think is my due, then I am simply staring at dust.”
That’s why the pope explained there are two paths from which to choose. One goes from dust to life and requires contemplating Christ. The other path leads from life to dust, when we reduce life to the ashes of selfishness and death.
POPE FRANCIS
“There is all this dust that besmirches our love and mars our life. Even in the Church, the house of God, we have let so much dust collect, the dust of worldliness.
How many times do we preach one thing and practice another! How many times do we make ourselves look good on the outside while nursing grudges within! How much duplicity do we have in our hearts… All this is dust that besmirches, ashes that extinguish the fire of love.”
After the homily came the imposition of the ashes. The pope was the first to receive them, from Cardinal Jozef Romko, who has the basilica as his titular church. Then Pope Francis imposed the ashes on others.
This ceremony marks the beginning of this year’s Lenten season. Pope Francis invites Christians to take advantage of this time to shake off spiritual sluggishness.
Ángeles Conde.
Translation: Claudia Torres
Pope reflects on how to live Lent during General Audience
Feb 26,2020
Pope Francis offered a Lenten reflection on “the desert” during his General Audience on Ash Wednesday.
He recommended silence, as a sort of desert. Thus, time away from cell phones, radio, television and retreating from the busy world. The pope also reminded Christians of the importance of fasting, as a way to recall simplicity of heart.
He prayed that at the end of Lent, each person has a garden of new life. Pope Francis asked that “prayer, fasting and works of mercy strengthen one’s resolve to follow the Lord on his journey.”
EXCERPTS OF POPE’S CATECHESIS
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today, Ash Wednesday, begins our annual Lenten journey of preparation for Easter. In a sense, we imitate Jesus, who spent forty days of prayer in the desert preparing for his public ministry. From a spiritual perspective, the desert is a place of life, not death. It is a place of silence, where we are interiorly free to hear the Lord’s word and to experience his loving call. In our busy world, how much we need that kind of silence, in order to grow in prayerful openness to God, to cultivate an ecology of the heart and to centre our lives on the things that really matter.
An important part of our Lenten desert experience is the practice of fasting, which trains us to recognize, in simplicity of heart, how often our lives are spent in empty and superficial pursuits. The solitude of the desert makes us all the more sensitive to those in our midst who quietly cry out for our help and encouragement. This Lent, may our prayer, fasting and works of mercy strengthen us in our resolve to follow the Lord on his journey through Good Friday to Easter Sunday, and enable us to know the power of his grace, which can make of every desert a garden of new life.
I welcome all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors taking part in today’s Audience, especially those from England, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States of America. May the Lenten journey we begin today bring us to Easter with hearts purified and renewed by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Upon you and your families I invoke joy and peace in Christ our Redeemer.
Ash Wednesday – Copyright: Vatican Media
Be Reconciled As God’s Beloved Children – Pope’s Words of Comfort This Ash Wednesday
Continuing Annual Ash Wednesday Procession, Pope Celebrates Mass at Basilica of St. Sabina All’Aventino
“Holiness is not achieved by our efforts, for it is grace! By ourselves, we cannot remove the dust that sullies our hearts. Only Jesus, who knows and loves our heart, can heal it. Lent is a time of healing.”
In his homily in Rome’s church of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill this Ash Wednesday, Pope Francis gave this reassurance.
This first day of the beginning of Lent, the Holy Father–continuing an annual papal tradition–presided over an assembly of prayer that took place in the form of the Roman “Stations.”
Ashes are thus a reminder of the direction of our existence: a passage from dust to life. We are dust, earth, clay, but if we allow ourselves to be shaped by the hands of God, we become something wondrous. More often than not, though, especially at times of difficulty and loneliness, we only see our dust! But the Lord encourages us: in his eyes, our littleness is of infinite value. So let us take heart: we were born to be loved; we were born to be children of God.
Dear brothers and sisters, may we keep this in mind as we begin this Lenten season.
“For Lent,” the Pope said, “is not a time for useless sermons, but for recognizing that our lowly ashes are loved by God. It is a time of grace, a time for letting God gaze upon us with love and in this way change our lives.”
Since we were put in this world to go from ashes to life, Francis said we mustn’t “turn our hopes and God’s dream for us, into powder and ashes,” nor “grow resigned.”
The Pope also reminded faithful that we are citizens of heaven, and that our ‘passport’ is, our love for our neighbor.
Moreover, the Holy Father pointed out, we can receive God’s forgiveness in the sacrament of Penance, because there “the fire of God’s love consumes the ashes of our sin.”
Assuring that “the embrace of the Father in confession renews us from inside and purifies our heart,” Pope Francis prayed “we allow ourselves to be reconciled, in order to live as beloved children, as forgiven and healed sinners, as wayfarers with Him at our side.”
He then appealed for us to let ourselves be loved, and stand up walking toward Easter, so that then “we will experience the joy of discovering how God raises us up from our ashes.”
This afternoon at 4:30, in the church of Saint Anselmo all”Aventino, a moment of prayer was held followed by a penitential procession to the Basilica of Saint Sabina.
Cardinals, archbishops, bishops, Benedictine monks of Saint Anselm, Dominican Fathers of Saint Sabina and some faithful, participated. At the end of the procession, Pope Francis presided over the celebration of the Eucharist in the Basilica of Saint Sabina, with the rite of the blessing and imposition of ashes.
Read the source: https://zenit.org/articles/be-reconciled-as-gods-beloved-children-popes-words-of-comfort-this-ash-wednesday/
Here is the Vatican-provided text of the Pope’s homily:
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We begin the Lenten Season by receiving ashes: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return (cf. Gen 3:19). The dust sprinkled on our heads brings us back to earth; it reminds us that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We are weak, frail and mortal. Centuries and millennia pass and we come and go; before the immensity of galaxies and space, we are nothing. We are dust in the universe. Yet we are dust loved by God. It pleased the Lord to gather that dust in his hands and to breathe into it the breath of life (cf. Gen 2:7). We are thus a dust that is precious, destined for eternal life. We are the dust of the earth, upon which God has poured out his heaven, the dust that contains his dreams. We are God’s hope, his treasure and his glory.
Ashes are thus a reminder of the direction of our existence: a passage from dust to life. We are dust, earth, clay, but if we allow ourselves to be shaped by the hands of God, we become something wondrous. More often than not, though, especially at times of difficulty and loneliness, we only see our dust! But the Lord encourages us: in his eyes, our littleness is of infinite value. So let us take heart: we were born to be loved; we were born to be children of God.
Dear brothers and sisters, may we keep this in mind as we begin this Lenten season. For Lent is not a time for useless sermons, but for recognizing that our lowly ashes are loved by God. It is a time of grace, a time for letting God gaze upon us with love and in this way change our lives. We were put in this world to go from ashes to life. So let us not turn our hopes and God’s dream for us into powder and ashes. Let us not grow resigned. You may ask: “How can I trust? The world is falling to pieces, fear is growing, there is so much malice all around us, society is becoming less and less Christian…” Don’t you believe that God can transform our dust into glory?
The ashes we receive on our foreheads should affect the thoughts passing through our minds. They remind us that, as God’s children, we cannot spend our lives chasing after dust. From there a question can pass into our hearts: “What am I living for?” If it is for the fleeting realities of this world, I am going back to ashes and dust, rejecting what God has done in my life. If I live only to earn money, to have a good time, to gain a bit of prestige or a promotion in my work, I am living for dust. If I am unhappy with life because I think I do not get enough respect or receive what I think is my due, then I am simply staring at dust.
That is not why we have been put in this world. We are worth so much more. We live for so much more, for we are meant to make God’s dream a reality and to love. Ashes are sprinkled on our heads so that the fire of love can be kindled in our hearts. We are citizens of heaven, and our love for God and neighbour is our passport to heaven. Our earthly possessions will prove useless, dust that scatters, but the love we share – in our families, at work, in the Church and in the world – will save us, for it will endure forever.
The ashes we receive remind us of a second and opposite passage: from life to dust. All around us, we see the dust of death. Lives reduced to ashes. Rubble, destruction, war. The lives of unwelcomed innocents, the lives of the excluded poor, the lives of the abandoned elderly. We continue to destroy ourselves, to return to ashes and dust. And how much dust there is in our relationships! Look at our homes and families: our quarrels, our inability to resolve conflicts, our unwillingness to apologize, to forgive, to start over, while at the same time insisting on our own freedom and our rights! All this dust that besmirches our love and mars our life. Even in the Church, the house of God, we have let so much dust collect, the dust of worldliness.
Let us look inside, into our hearts: how many times do we extinguish the fire of God with the ashes of hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the filth that Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that we have to remove. Indeed, the Lord tells us not only to carry out works of charity, to pray and to fast, but also to do these without pretense, duplicity and hypocrisy (cf. Mt 6:2.5.16). Yet how often do we do things only to be recognized, to look good, to satisfy our ego! How often do we profess to be Christians, yet in our hearts readily yield to passions that enslave us! How often do we preach one thing and practice another! How many times do we make ourselves look good on the outside while nursing grudges within! How much duplicity do we have in our hearts… All this is dust that besmirches, ashes that extinguish the fire of love.
We need to be cleansed of all the dust that has sullied our hearts. How? The urgent summons of Saint Paul in today’s second reading can help us. Paul says: “Be reconciled to God!” He does not simply ask; he begs: “We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). We would have said: “Reconcile yourselves with God!” But no, Paul uses passive form: Be reconciled! Holiness is not achieved by our efforts, for it is grace! By ourselves, we cannot remove the dust that sullies our hearts. Only Jesus, who knows and loves our heart, can heal it. Lent is a time of healing.
What, then, are we to do? In journeying towards Easter, we can make two passages: first, from dust to life, from our fragile humanity to the humanity of Jesus, who heals us. We can halt in contemplation before the crucified Lord and repeat: “Jesus, you love me, transform me… Jesus, you love me, transform me…” And once we have received his love, once we have wept at the thought of that love, we can make the second passage, by determining never to fall again from life into dust. We can receive God’s forgiveness in the sacrament of Penance, because there the fire of God’s love consumes the ashes of our sin. The embrace of the Father in confession renews us from inside and purifies our heart. May we allow ourselves to be reconciled, in order to live as beloved children, as forgiven and healed sinners, as wayfarers with him at our side.
Let us allow ourselves to be loved, so that we can give love in return. Let us allow ourselves to stand up and walk towards Easter. Then we will experience the joy of discovering how God raises us up from our ashes.
[Original text: Italian] [Vatican-provided text]
General Audience – Copyright Vatican Media
POPE’S GENERAL AUDIENCE: On Lent (Full Text)
‘Lent is desert, it’s the time to give up, to tear ourselves away from our mobile phone and connect ourselves to the Gospel…’
This morning’s General Audience was held at 9:15 am in St. Peter’s Square, where the Holy Father Francis met with groups of pilgrims and faithful from Italy and from all over the world.
In his address in Italian, the Pope focused his meditation on Lent: to enter in the desert (Biblical passage: From the Gospel according to Luke 4:1).
After summarizing his catechesis in several languages, the Holy Father expressed special greetings to groups of faithful present. Then he expressed again his closeness to the sick with Coronavirus and to the health workers committed in their care.
The General Audience ended with the singing of the Pater Noster and the Apostolic Blessing.
Read the source: https://zenit.org/articles/popes-general-audience-on-lent-full-text/?
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The Holy Father’s Catechesis
Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning!
Today we begin the Lenten journey, journey of forty days to Easter, to the heart of the Liturgical Year and of the faith. It’s a journey that follows that of Jesus, who at the beginning of His ministry withdrew to the desert for forty days, to pray and fast, and to be tempted by the devil. In fact, it’s the spiritual meaning of the desert that I would like to talk to you about today.
What does the desert mean spiritually for all of us, also for us that live in cities, what does the desert mean? Let us imagine we are in a desert. The first sensation would be that of finding ourselves enveloped in a great silence: no noises, apart from the wind and our breathing. See, the desert is the place of detachment from the din that surrounds us. It’s absence of words to make room for another Word, the Word of God, which caresses the heart as a light breeze (Cf. 1 Kings 19:12). The desert is the place of the Word, with a capital W. In fact, in the Bible the Lord likes to talk to us in the desert. He gives Moses the “ten words” in the desert, the Ten Commandments. And when the people distance themselves from Him, becoming an unfaithful bride, God says: “Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth (Hosea 2:16-17). In the desert one listens to the Word of God, which is like a light sound. Intimacy with God, the love of the Lord is rediscovered in the wilderness. Jesus liked to withdraw every day to desert places to pray (Cf. Luke 5:16). He taught us how to seek the Father, who speaks to us in silence. And it’s not easy to be silent in the heart, because we always seek to speak a bit, to be with others.
Lent is the propitious time to make room for the Word of God. It’s the time to turn off the television and to open the Bible. When I was a child, there was no television, but there was the custom not to listen to the radio. Lent is desert, it’s the time to give up, to tear ourselves away from our mobile phone and connect ourselves to the Gospel. It’s the time to give up useless words, slander, rumours and gossip, and to speak and give oneself to the Lord. It’s the time to dedicate oneself to a healthy ecology of the heart, to clean it. We live in a polluted environment of too much verbal violence, of many offensive and harmful words, which the network amplifies. Today one insults as if one said “Good Day.” We are submerged in empty words, publicity, sly messages. We are used to feeling everything about everything and we risk sliding into a worldliness that atrophies the heart, and there is no bypass to heal this, but only silence. It’s hard for us to distinguish the Lord’s voice, which speaks to us, the voice of conscience, of goodness. Calling us in the desert, Jesus invites us to listen to what matters, to the important, to the essential. To the devil that tempted Him, He answered: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). As bread, more than bread we need the Word of God, we need to talk to God: we need to pray, because only before God do the inclinations of the heart come to light and the duplicities of the soul fall. Behold the desert, place of life not of death, because to converse with the Lord in silence restores life to us. Let’s try again to think of a desert. The desert is the place of the essential. Let us look at our lives: how many useless things surround us! We pursue a thousand things that seem necessary and in reality, aren’t so. How much good it would do us to be free of so many superfluous realities, to rediscover what counts, to rediscover the face of the One next to us! On this also Jesus gives us the example by fasting. To fast is not only to slim down, to fast is in fact to go to the essential and to seek the beauty of a simpler life.
Finally, the desert is the place of solitude. Today also, close to us, there are so many deserts. They are the people that are alone and abandoned. How many poor and elderly are next to us and live in silence, without clamouring, marginalized and discarded! To speak of them doesn’t command an audience. But the desert leads us to them, to all those that, silenced, ask for our help in silence. The Lenten journey in the desert is a journey of charity to the weakest.
Prayer, fasting, works of mercy: behold the journey in the Lenten desert. Dear brothers and sisters, with the prophet Isaiah’s voice, God has made this promise: “Behold, I am doing a new thing, I will make a way in the wilderness” (Isaiah 43:19). The way is opened in the desert that leads us from death to life. We enter the desert with Jesus, and we will come out of it savouring Easter, the power of God’s love that renews life. It will happen to us as it does in those deserts that flower in spring, making buds and plants sprout suddenly “from nothing.” Courage, let us enter in this desert of Lent, let us follow Jesus in the desert: with Him our deserts will flower.
[Original text: Italian] [ZENIT’s translation by Virginia M. Forrester]In Italian
A warm welcome goes to the Italian-speaking faithful. In particular, I greet the members of the Focolare Movement and of the Missionary Congregation of the Servants of the Holy Spirit; and the parish groups, in particular that of Cisterna di Latina. Moreover, I greet the Cantori delle Cime [“Singers of the Summits”] of Lugano. A special thought goes to the dependents of the Air Italy Company, and I hope that their work situation can find a fair solution in respect of the rights of all, especially of the families. Finally, I greet the young people, the elderly, the sick and the newlyweds. Today, Ash Wednesday, the Lord points out to us the journey of faith to follow. Allow yourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit on this journey of conversion, to rediscover the joy of Christian hope.
[Original text: Italian] [ZENIT’s translation by Virginia M. Forrester]
General Audience © Zenit/María Langarica
During General Audience, Pope Prays for Those With Coronavirus
Also Prays for Those Working to Help Cure Patients & to Help Stop Its Spread
Pope Francis has expressed his closeness to all those ill with Coronavirus and to all those working to help them and stop the contagion from further spreading.
The Holy Father did so today, Ash Wednesday, during his weekly General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, Feb. 26, 2020, toward its conclusion.
‘I wish to again express my closeness to those ill with Coronavirus,” Francis said.
The Holy Father also expressed this closeness “to the healthcare workers working to cure them, as well as to the civil authorities and everyone working to assist patients and stop the contagion.’
Vatican Adopts Preventive Measures in Response to Coronavirus
The Holy Father’s Appeal
I wish to express again my closeness to the sick with Coronavirus, and to the health workers taking care of them, as well as to the Civil Authorities and to all those that are committed in assisting the patients and halting the contagion.